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Ah, Life

@jigthejiggetyjigger

The tragedies of my life as a dysfunctional human being with no coordination
Chaon, he/him, 19
Discord: chaosgod#6691

For my linguistsics degree, I did a project on why I'm seeing more people saying "on accident" instead of "by accident." I looked at almost a million pieces of writing pulled from news sites, blogs, academic articles and television transcripts. I found almost three hundred cases of "on accident" being used. It was a surprisingly even spread across sources. Even more interesting, I organized the hits by date and tracked an upward swing in use as time goes on. This means that the use of "on accident" is increasing over time, and may eventually supplant and drive out the classic usage of "by accident." I like to call this prepositional shift.

Now, looking at my data and looking at the age ranges of the writers or speakers, the majority of them were under the age of thirty. So I interviewed a panel of people, choosing twenty with a spread of about half above thirty, and half below. Those older than thirty years of age felt "strongly" or "very strongly" that "on accident" was wrong in all cases, and that "by accident" was the only correct phrase. However, those younger than thirty were much less rigorous, with more than half feeling "ambivalent" or "less strongly" about which was correct. This demonstrates a generational link in preposition usage.

When presented with options for the definitions of "by" and "on," we also get some interesting data. For by, there are two main definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary: 1. Identifying the agent performing an action. Or 2. Indicating the means of achieving something. Whereas "on" has many more definitions, the pertinent ones being 1. To indicate the manner of doing something or 2. To indicate active involvement in a condition or status. By the above definitions, either "by accident" or "on accident" is a correct usage of the term. However, native speakers of English could not successfully define either preposition, instead just choosing one, the other, or both as "sounding correct."

The only evidence for a rule-based shift that I could find was a correlation with the paired phrase for the opposite condition "on purpose." While the younger interviewees were ambivalent about the correctness of "on accident," they uniformly rejected the correctness of the suggested phrase "by purpose." So the shift can only be in one direction according the the native ear, towards the preposition "on."

Whether this means that the particular usage of "by" is becoming archaic or the definition of "on" is expanding is a possible subject of further study using a wider range of phrases. But I found the wider acceptance of "on accident" versus "by accident" to be a fascinating look at how prepositions can shift meaning and usage over time.

So now I'm curious, five years from my initial study (and itching to try the Tumblr poll feature):

“I’ve been a massage therapist for many years, now. I know what people look like. People have been undressing for me for a long time. I know what you look like: a glance at you, and I can picture pretty well what you’d look like on my table. Let’s start here with what nobody looks like: nobody looks like the people in magazines or movies. Not even models. Nobody. Lean people have a kind of rawboned, unfinished look about them that is very appealing. But they don’t have plump round breasts and plump round asses. You have plump round breasts and a plump round ass, you have a plump round belly and plump round thighs as well. That’s how it works. And that’s very appealing too. Woman have cellulite. All of them. It’s dimply and cute. It’s not a defect. It’s not a health problem. It’s the natural consequence of not consisting of photoshopped pixels, and not having emerged from an airbrush. Men have silly buttocks. Well, if most of your clients are women, anyway. You come to male buttocks and you say – what, this is it? They’re kind of scrawny and the tissue is jumpy because it’s unpadded; you have to dial back the pressure, or they’ll yelp. Adults sag. It doesn’t matter how fit they are. Every decade, an adult sags a little more. All of the tissue hangs a little looser. They wrinkle, too. I don’t know who put about the rumor that just old people wrinkle. You start wrinkling when you start sagging, as soon as you’re all grown up, and the process goes its merry way as long as you live. Which is hopefully a long, long time, right? Everybody on a massage table is beautiful. There are really no exceptions to this rule. At that first long sigh, at that first thought that “I can stop hanging on now, I’m safe” – a luminosity, a glow, begins. Within a few minutes the whole body is radiant with it. It suffuses the room: it suffuses the massage therapist too. People talk about massage therapists being caretakers, and I suppose we are: we like to look after people, and we’re easily moved to tenderness. But to let you in on a secret: I’m in it for the glow. I’ll tell you what people look like, really: they look like flames. Or like the stars, on a clear night in the wilderness.”
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i beg you.. stop only consuming kids media.. your life will be so much better

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u can watch whatever you want dgmw but if you 34 and getting in discourse about the morals in bluey and making headcanons about cocomelon maybe it’s time to broaden ur interests

cold ass take. i’ve got enough adult shit to deal with irl, i don’t need it in my media. i have enough complex real life issues to think about in my professional life studying polsci. i watch cartoons for FUN, specifically to get away from all this shit.

I think if your reading comprehension is this shitty you shouldn’t be allowed to reblog posts

Enlighten me about the true meaning of this post. I think my reading comprehension is pretty darn good thank you very much

THEN WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE POST

How to Finish

I drew this poster for Jon Acuff and his FINISH book tour. Big thanks to Jon for this collaboration, his book has some great ideas about how to complete creative and life goals.

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Love this, but reblogging it specifically for “Get rid of secret rules.” That’s one of the most amazing illustrations—and points—I’ve ever seen.

so important especially for perfectionists who procrastinate and never finish, or even start because they set such high standards for themselves.

This guy raised an abandoned moose calf with his Horses, and believe it or not, he has trained it for lumber removal and other hauling tasks. Given the 2,000 pounds of robust muscle, and the splayed, grippy hooves, he claims it is the best work animal he has. He says the secret to keeping the moose around is a sweet salt lick, although, during the rut he disappears for a couple of weeks, but always comes home…. Impressive !! MINNESOTA CLYDESDALE

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sturmtruppen

why are moose so terrifyingly large

Because they’re pretty much legit surviving Ice Age megafauna and almost everything was bigger back then

his moose leaves for a few weeks to Fuck

And comes back because he figures he has a pretty sweet deal.  Oats, salt, probably some treats and scratches, for the price of some basic pulling and advanced not murdering fools?

Sometimes I think people give themselves too much credit for animal domestication.  Sometimes the main character of the domestication story is some terrifying beast who reasons, “But salt though.”

Genuinely - why do people want the Christmas specials back, versus New Years? Why is it so important that an alien who is not from Earth acknowledge special Jesus tree day, when almost everything else around that time of year in that part of the world is ALSO about special Jesus tree day? Doesn't it make more sense for a time traveller to care about the *new* year versus a holiday celebrated by one chunk of the population?

I mean, new years l is also only celebrated by (an admittedly large) chunk of the population (those who use the Gregorian calendar)... Petition to have a DW Rosh Hashanah special.

You're right DW Rosh Hashana & Lunar New Year. You're a genius & a scholar & deserve a zillion dollar grant

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concept: every year they have one holiday special and it has to be a different holiday every time

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I haven’t done anything for 4 hours but watch whatever cartoon loads up next so anyways there’s a whole episode of american dad bout klaus the fish dating an ancient malevolent wraith

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alright so he was super in love with her but he found out she’s just bound to whoever holds this cursed artifact he bought and therefore she never had any agency in their relationship, which he didn’t know because all she could do is shriek and he was inferring whatever he wanted to hear. He shatters the item to set her free and she tries to kill everyone but now that he can talk to her for real he finds out what she’s really into is baseball trivia so they go on a baseball road trip as platonic friends and that’s how the episode ends

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“Thin brows are back in” “skinny jeans are back” “wolfcuts are out” “this style of eyeshadow is soo trendy right now” “big asses are out, slim figures are in”

Hey do you guys ever make your own decisions or form your own ideas on how you would personally like to look that’s not based around what’s currently being sold to you. Is that not possible

“Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months”

-Oscar Wilde

Sonic the Hedgehog (sustained speed of 767 MPH) could have made the journey from the Shire to Mount Doom (1718.5 miles) in just over two hours. But also he famously loves rings, so he almost assuredly would have found the thrall of the Ring far too powerful to resist. Tails would have had to shoot him

And Frodo's heart was not pure? Frodo's love for his friends was any weaker? The Ring would have filled Sonic's head with visions of unlimited chili dogs and he would have fallen under its power. The line of hedgehogs would be broken